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- [00:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O'Carroll in Chicago. We are thrilled to now be the official podcast partner of the Effie's and today's episode is the first in a series of shows that will focus on EFFIE Award winners. There is so much great work recognized with FE Awards and we're going to be live at the FE Awards Gala in New York City in a few weeks, interviewing 2025 Effie Award winners as they come off stage. If you're gonna please do come by and say hello and we'll soon have an all new FE Winners section on our website. If you're a regular listener, you know we've always had FE winners on the show, but they'll soon be grouped in a dedicated tab so they'll be easier to locate and to listen to. Today's episode features Skittles. It's One of the 2024 Global Grand Effie winners honored in Effie's Best of the Best competition. The prestigious Best of Bess Awards program is the pinnacle of marketing effectiveness. Featuring only the best campaigns that have already earned gold or Grand Effie honors in national or regional FE programs around the world. It celebrates the highest standards in marketing. Our guests today are Rankin Carroll, Chief Brand Officer for Mars Wrigley. Rankin counts Snickers, skittles, M&MS. Twix and others as part of his Mars Wrigley portfolio. Just pretty much an amazing group of brands. Joining him today is Colin Selakow. Colin is Chief Creative Officer of DDB here in Chicago. We're gonna be talking about Apologize the Rainbow, A little bit of background here. Following a decision in 2013 to change the flavor of green Skittles from lime to green apple, a passionate group of Skittles lovers had taken their discontent to social media and other platforms. These disillusioned voices remained constant for close to 10 years, driving the most visible interest and engagement around the core Skittles product even as they were actually actively hating on it. What's interesting about this case is time. This wasn't a reactive corporate crisis communications campaign. It happened close to 10 years later. What it was was a strategic decision to positively highlight the negative passion of these fans and convert it into positive energy around the brand at a time when it needed growth in its core Skittles varietal. Skittles has done quirky, playful work for a long time. It's what they describe as work that is a welcome disruption to the predictable. More recently, a one time 30 minute musical staged on Super Bowl Sunday and A series of fun teaser ads starring David Schwimmer in advance of their campaign that targeted a single person. One shows Schwimmer feeding Skittles to his sandwich. You can see that work and all of the Apologize the Rainbow campaign work on our website@onstrategyshowcase.com so here is award winning Skittles Apologize the Rainbow with Rankin Carroll and Colin Salikow. Enjoy.
- [03:31]
Rankin Carroll
Nine years ago, we took away lime Skittles and replaced them with green apple. Turns out that was a terrible decision. In fact, 130,880 people complained online and they've continued to complain for nine f ing years. Now that lime was back, we needed to turn all that hate back into love again. But how?
- [03:50]
Colin Selakow
Good morning. In 2013, Skittles upset a lot of people by taking away lime. Skittles will now apologize to everyone who ever complained.
- [03:57]
Rankin Carroll
We started by apologizing with a 35 minute live press conference on Twitch.
- [04:01]
Colin Selakow
Atsandchins writes, I want lime Skittles. Green apple is garbage. We're sorry. MatthewCalloway writes, Green Skittles are the physical manifestation of sadness. We are sorry.
- [04:14]
Rankin Carroll
A record 136,000 people tuned in to watch us highlight and apologize to all that negativity.
- [04:20]
Colin Selakow
99999 writes, Such trash. They taste of green apple and betrayal. Skittles suck. Now the reason I have trust issues. I may as well have bought a vomit bag. Vomitzclams. We are sorry. Skittles is sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
- [04:40]
Fergus O'Carroll
We are very excited to have these guys on the show. This is a 2023 US Gold Effie winner and in 2024 won the global grand winner in the Effie's Best of the best competition. So this is the top of the heap. So I'm thrilled to have both these guys here. Rankin, welcome back. We did one on Snickers a while ago and that was a brilliant, I mean, super popular episode. Talking about Snickers. So great to have you back, Fergus.
- [05:10]
Colin Selakow
It's great to be with you again. I'm glad to hear it was popular.
- [05:14]
Fergus O'Carroll
And we have, we have Colin joining us. Colin, it's great to have you. This is probably going to be another iconic episode because this is another iconic brand.
- [05:21]
Rankin Carroll
Well, there's no pressure now that you've said this. Is that kind of.
- [05:24]
Fergus O'Carroll
I was just saying that Snickers was.
- [05:26]
Rankin Carroll
Your musk, you know, popular. One answer.
- [05:29]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, we might have to edit that out. That's a little too much. Let's dive in. Rankin. For those around the world who may not know Skittles and I can imagine there's probably just two or three people. Tell us a little about the scope of the business and tell us what actually Skittles are.
- [05:45]
Colin Selakow
Well, Skittles are the world's most delicious fruit flavored chewy candy at their heart. But we play in other regions. But it's number one, number one fruit flavored candy in the world. In the last four years it's kind of doubled in size in revenue. So that's kind of exciting in terms of a growth. Some people might say juggernaut. I would never say juggernaut. Some people do. And like the US in terms of scale or scope, US is our biggest market for like over 70, 70% of our sales are there. However, on the back of some of the work that we're going to talk about today, this brand has traveled around the world and it's, it's done well in markets in Europe, the UK most specifically where it's, it's been growing in the last few years as well as China where we came in with this kind of crazy idea. And some of the creativity in China is absolutely fantastic. In their ecosystems and their environments are bringing this idea of disrupting the predictable into that world has been really fun. But yeah, so it's global, it's cross markets, US dominant and it plays I guess in the traditional chewy candy. We've got a gummies offering as well so we're playing in that part of the category as well. And then the innovation streams on Skittles been interesting around opening up into aerated candy and all these other things that you know, again the, the nature of the brand, the brand idea allows you to, to, to play, play with formats. In the most recent thing that Colin and the team have led some amazing creative on is on a freeze dried product that we call Skittles Popped. So yeah, that's a little bit about, about the brand and it's, it's the place in the world.
- [07:28]
Fergus O'Carroll
So the business has doubled in the last handful of years.
- [07:31]
Colin Selakow
Yeah, it is an amazing thing. And you know, listen, this is you know, credit to teams around the world who've just gotten behind it. I think it's a natural consumers the category itself by the way. So Fruity confections as we call it has been growing. So it's got natural trajectory. It's, there's lots of reasons why. But yeah, the category is growing and we've grown ahead of the category. So it's been, it's been a good run, it's been a great Run.
- [08:01]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Colin, how long have you been working on the business?
- [08:04]
Rankin Carroll
So I moved to DB in 2017 to start working on Skittles and I think it was at the point where we were just starting to get into a bit of a strategic reinvention for the brand. And I think since then we've had a pretty staggering run of work and credit to Branken and his team and the strategy that we inherited. I think a lot of the groundwork was there already. But if you think about just from there, from exclusive, the Rainbow, Broadway the Rainbow, Apologize the Rainbow. There's just been a great string of work as the brand has grown. I think so has our confidence in the type of work we've been doing. So it's been a terrific run. I mean, I think, you know, we've loved it.
- [08:44]
Fergus O'Carroll
So it's too. That platform. I don't even know how, I don't even know how to say it because you have this interchangeability of the first word in this platform. I'm going to just say it's, I'm going to say chase the rainbow. So the word chase would change?
- [09:00]
Rankin Carroll
Yes.
- [09:01]
Fergus O'Carroll
Is that how. So tell me, how do you, when you refer to it, how do you describe what that is? Do you have to insert your word in order to describe it?
- [09:08]
Rankin Carroll
You know, we would just describe it as blank of the rainbow. Right. Because I think what is so great about having that modular structure is you can take any moment, any product, any particular cultural phenomenon, and you can badge it with this is Skittles take on disruption within that. So, you know, the history of where that came from is obviously if you're on the pack, there's an upside down rainbow that's been there forever, pretty much since the, you know, since the beginning of the brand. So taking that idea and saying, this is our rainbow, what is our particular disruption around that? So, for example, if we upending corporate apologies, it's apologize the rainbow. If we're upending, you know, the super bowl, it's Broadway the Rainbow. So it's just a great way for us to badge any type of moment with our branded disruption. And it's, it's, it's, it's, as I say, like a lot of that was inherited for us, but I think we've started to take it into really different and interesting, you know, areas.
- [10:02]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, and so the, the idea of the rainbow is that it is, for those who've lived under a rock for decades, it's rainbow because it is the assortment of colors that are on all of the candies. That are inside the pack. Right. So, Rankin, disrupting predictability was a term you just used a couple of minutes ago. Tell me about what, what is meant by disrupting predictability.
- [10:25]
Colin Selakow
It was started by Insights. And this is way back in the day when the Rainbow strategy first launched, you know, back to Jerry Graf and team working on this thing. It was about deliberately stepping in to connect with a younger generation and doing so in a way that would show up on their radar at a time in their lives when they're looking for non conventional answers where they're questioning a lot of things, where anything that's predictable in life, if we all remember being a teenager is like, yeah, really like you want to be cool, you want to be different, you want to be not predictable. And you know, the predictable life is pretty mundane. Life is pretty every day. And the whole experience of, of the category is to give you that fruity jolt, you know, that sort of pop of flavor to kind of shake you out of your, your doldrums in your mouth and that kind of expanded into, in your head. And that was kind of the, the impetus for the thinking that's. I think that the, really the, the part I'm proudest of is that ESSENCE has remained at the core of the brand all through the work that Colin was just describing. So when I kind of came around on the skittles in the global role around 2017 and Colin and Ari Weiss, our dear friend Ari Weiss all came on and that with a lot of great other people working on this thing, we knew that we had to maintain that thread and not lose sight. But we also knew that the dynamics of culture were changing and that point we were now talking to Gen Z and how do we maintain that thread but do so in a relevant way? So as Colin started to describe, and I'll give it to Colin to sort of take it a bit further, but we wanted to do things in a way that were headline that got headlined. So number one is we want to drive headlines, but you've got to do a lot to get people to go what they did. Wait, what? And that for us almost became the standard that if we could get Gen Z to go, excuse me, they did what? And then tell their friends or you know, that was the beginning of memes. All the things we're living with every day, eight, nine years later, we're all kind of getting off the ground, then.
- [12:41]
Rankin Carroll
Yeah, I think just like the full phrase that we use is a welcome disruption to the predictable. Like the idea of something being welcome to people is really kind of key to how we executed this. Well, because it's obviously very easy to be contrary, right? You can just zag when everyone else is zigging and you can just be different. But providing people something that's welcome, that they're looking forward to seeing time and time again, I think is the trick with a lot of the Skittles work as well. And I think as Rankin was talking about, that idea of needing that pressure release from conformity or common sense or whatever it happens to be is such a great constant. Because whichever generation you're talking about, those pressures are still there. Whether you're X or your Y or you're millennial, whatever it happens to be, there is this pressure to conform form, to, you know, to adapt to whatever's going on around there. And I think they're all looking, whichever generation, they're looking for a little bit of that release valve. And I think Skittles has such a welcome role in culture. To be here is this absurd, strange, wonderful, you know, break from everything that, you know, and being pressured to, you know, online and in your life. So I think it started to become such a welcome role for us to play. And as we did one thing after another after another, we started seeing people really responding to that and even looking forward to it, looking out for it, saying, what is Skittles take on this? And I think that's, you know, you think about the super bowl, you think about product launches, you think about whatever it is, it's like, what is Skittles take on that? And I think there are very few brands that have such a distinct point of view and a distinct role in culture. And I think that's the genius of the campaign that we inherited as well. It's constantly relevant to build on that.
- [14:14]
Colin Selakow
Constantly relevant. The idea demands that you are fresh. The idea demands that you don't be like, it's almost. Does the campaign become predictable? Well, it cannot become predictable. So it's almost built in. Inherent to the fundamental campaign idea is something that you've got to almost self disrupt one. And the other point that's really important that Colin made is this welcome because we did sometimes lose our way and just. It's just weird for weird's sake. And it started to go like, that's just weird. Like super weird. Like, I don't know if it's entertaining, I don't think. I think it's funny, it's just weird. And that was wrong and that was not right for the brand and we had to kind of pull ourselves back. So just this welcome idea is really important, actually.
- [14:55]
Rankin Carroll
And it's funny. I mean, you mentioned that, like, what makes a Skittles idea wrong and what makes one right. And it is. It's not about just being weird or just being disruptive for the sake of it. There's some, like, Skittles math that we talk about as well. There's actually a real logic behind what we do. Like, you can look at something on a surface and say, that's pretty stupid to do that, but there's actually a genius behind that. We're trying to achieve something. We're trying to. You know, there is actually an objective behind it. Even bringing it back to apologize. It looks absurd on the. On the surface. You're looking at that. You're saying we're going to surface every single angry comment and tweet that people have said about us in the most, you know, you know, vile things that people have said. But when you think about what we're actually trying to do, we're trying to surface the love that people had for this brand to highlight the launch of lime or the bringing back of lime. There's a real smartness at the heart of that. And I think that was something we've started to. Or we had to find our feet on as well. It's like, look, there's a point we're trying to make, and we're using absurdity and stupidity and weirdness or whatever it happens to be to make a really smart point. And I think if you look at the pieces of work that have been most successful, they all tend to do that. It looks crazy on the surface, but there's always a great story and an objective and something that we've achieved. You know, at the other end of that.
- [16:13]
Fergus O'Carroll
We'll be right back. For over 55 years, Effie has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effectiveness awards across 130 markets worldwide. And their coveted Effie Index ranks the most effective brands, marketers and agencies globally. But EFFIE is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers, from seasoned CMOs to those just getting started, understand what makes marketing effective by equipping them with the insights, tools and inspiration they need to succeed. Learn more@effie.org that's E F-F I E.org now back to the show. Yeah, so let's talk about the business challenge. Rankin, Just to give this context, because there's a really interesting twist in this. When I read the case, I was thinking at first this was a reaction to something that had happened, but it really isn't that. It's about being able to use something that was happening a long time ago as a really smart way to build the business. So it wasn't reactive at all. It was very, very strategic. But before we get there, I want to just talk about the business problem. My understanding is that the Skittles is primarily a chewy product in texture. Gummies had become popular. So the business challenge was rooted in the fact that the original Skittles varietal was not as popular as some new flavors or some new textures that had come into the category competitively. Is that sort of what the challenge was loosely?
- [18:01]
Colin Selakow
Well, there's a couple different things. So, you know, big brands as, as this audience knows well, need to satisfy its core constituency, but also open up to new growth penetration opportunities. So as we were looking at what we look at as categories, we take a role. If we're as one of the largest brands in the category and certain level at the start of the largest brand, we take a responsibility for the category and its growth. So whilst the chewy business is at the core of the business and an important business, it had a growth trajectory that was really strong and then it was starting to slow down and competition was coming in. So the other thing was an attractive category. So we started to have a lot more players coming into the mix and that, that started to throw up some challenges for, you know, the, the, the strength of, of our, of our business and then in the growth, the growth dynamic. So you start to look to how do we keep strengthening the core? So the core campaign would keep working on that, but then the innovation stream has to open up to new users, new occasions and new reasons to come into the brand, whether it's to get a chewy experience, to get a gummy experience, to get a Skittles clouds experience, which is almost a marshmallow experience, and to get. Or to get a crunchy experience as we've just launched with the Skittles pop proposition. So that's kind of what's behind the strategic proliferation around opening up new pathways to growth. On the lime thing, just to be clear about that, that was a business decision taken as we look to grow globally. And as we talk about play for scale, we had different flavor sets across markets and we were looking to actually get to some scale on one flavor. And that's when we moved out of lime and moved into this green apple place, Play, which was present some other markets and we were moving to a line for some. For some good business reasons. And in retrospect, a lot of people were quite unhappy about that. Now, the good news is they didn't stop buying Skittles because of it. They sort of lived with it, but they were super vocal. And so we have this kind of moment. We recognized it. We made the call, we made. We took the risk, and then we kind of. That just sort of sat in the corner for a while and we had the complaints that were logged and answered at the time. And then time went by, and then we kind of came back to unpacking it.
- [20:38]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, because this was in 2013, right. When you transitioned over. And so what I find really interesting about this is that this isn't a campaign that was a reaction to 2013. So you later were able to leverage that in a way that got back to some of those sort of core enthusiast audiences. Colin, this idea that. What I'm super curious about is why wait so long? It wasn't that you ignored the haters as you.
- [21:10]
Rankin Carroll
No, no. The reason to wait so long is unless you're actually going to do something about it, responding to it seems hollow. And I think if you think about the context that we used to launch this campaign, the idea of upending corporate apologies, most of them are pretty hollow and performative. Right. To take out a New York Times ad and we're done. Right. We washed our hands of it. But for us, I think there's a very big difference between saying, sorry we took lime away, and saying, sorry, we took lime away. Here it is. It's back. Like, there's a very big difference between doing those two things. So once we were relaunching the product and actually addressing it, it seemed like that was the time to go back to the people we offended and new fans anyway, and say, look, we're bringing it back. Because there was this, you know, upswell of anger around it. So it feels like it needed to be substantive and we needed to be doing something about it. And then once it was back, was the time to do that.
- [22:01]
Colin Selakow
And so I think the other thing, Fergus, I'd say is it was a time when we were really together with our creative partners and calling them the teams investing in our fandom. Because one thing Skittles has, all of our brands have fandoms, but Skittles fandom is rabid. And if you, you know, you just look at the social stuff out there, you look at the communities, what they're talking about, they're active. And so it's a source. Right. If you're paying attention and you're really engaged with your brand. And this is. This is what's a great lesson. I think our creative partners understand our fandom and spend time in our fandoms and in our communities just riffing and understanding what's going on. And that's honestly what this is about. This is about saying we're looking for sources of creativity. We're looking for veins that will unlock or insights that will unlock a thought, a creative idea. And that's exactly what happened here. Is this, as you say, this was a eight or nine years between when we took the action to stop it, took the complaints, manage them as good stewards as you would expect them to do, as us to do. But we didn't see, as Colin said, it wasn't sort of seen as an opportunity. It was like we managed the complaint, we moved on. But then that was in the ecosystem, if you will, and it was in the fandom. And so they were mining the fandom and sort of said, there's this thing. I see a lot of people talking about this. And that became the beginning of a conversation call. I might be retrofitting history.
- [23:26]
Rankin Carroll
No, no, you're absolutely right. And look, I think the. Every time we saw comments about lime and people angry about lime, it was kind of a gift that would be crazy for us to ignore. And I think it's a lesson a lot of brands learn is you need to address your fans, you need to engage with them. I think, you know, it's common sense to do that now, but I think, you know, it took brands a while to catch up on that. And I think what was interesting for us is that when you look at how much time it takes to actually sit in front of your computer, type out something creative, interesting, and maybe a little negative about Skittles, post it, what that actually shows is an enormous amount of passion for the brand. Like, the time it takes to do that, whether it's positive or negative, shows there's this love for the brand, there's this love for lime. And again, talking about that strange Skittles math, the more angry that the people were, the more love they were showing for lime. And I think that that was the unlock for us on the creative side anyways. Like, oh, wow. If we. The more angry we can show people are, the more we can show how much they loved Lyme. And that's a great way to bring lime back into the world. So, you know, if somebody's sitting there and saying, skittles is the reason I have Trust issues. This is somebody who cares very deeply about Skittles lime and this is a fan we want to be addressing. So it was such an unlock for us. Like, and I will just say just rank and your team, you and your team were terrific. But it made selling some of the more hardcore tweets so much easier because you just have to keep remembering, no, the more negative it is, the more, the more love they have for the brand. And that's what we're actually surfacing. So again, there's that. That great skills, math, and it allows us to be so breakthrough of what we do that I just think there are very few brands out there that have the courage and like the strategic rigor to deliver on that time and time again.
- [25:21]
Colin Selakow
What Colin's describing is the gift that every marketer and every advertising person would want, which is this is the consumer speaking directly to you, feeding your creativity. Like, it's absolutely remarkable.
- [25:35]
Fergus O'Carroll
But most don't recognize that energy. Right. They run away from it. Right.
- [25:41]
Rankin Carroll
I'll tell you. And you know what was interesting about that is like whatever we did, whatever campaign for whatever moment, whatever product, there was always at least one comment that said, bring back lime. It could be completely unrelated. Somebody would post bring back lime.
- [25:54]
Colin Selakow
And by the way, bring back what?
- [25:56]
Rankin Carroll
Bring back lime.
- [25:57]
Colin Selakow
Put out something for a different product.
- [25:59]
Rankin Carroll
There was someone bring back lime. And so it was almost like they kept reminding us and the more we moved on, be like, no, bring back lime. Bring back lime. There was always these little reminders. So, you know, when the decision, it was kind of a no brainer. When you look at putting lime back into the packs, you're thinking there's a whole groundswell of people who've been telling us to do this for so long. There's so much passion out there for the brand. And this flavor was very easy. It's easy to say that now, but it was very easy to come to this idea of saying, let's use that to show the world the love for lime.
- [26:33]
Fergus O'Carroll
So here's the interesting question. There's so many of them, but the chicken and the egg thing. Rankin, did you decide to introduce lime and therefore you needed an idea, or did the agency come with an idea that said we should bring back lime?
- [26:52]
Colin Selakow
It was the. It was the latter. So it was the idea and the response to fans got traction and we went back and said, and by the way, the other dynamic that shifted in this was the US had now become a dramatically larger part of our business by this stage. So in terms of. So the Idea of playing for a scale choice, actually, without getting too much into that side of it. But the business logic to bring back lime was also there, by the way. So it was an idea that was floated. And we're like, well, what would that look like? Because the campaign idea, the communications idea is so exciting and so much fun. Could we even do it? And then we sort of went back and said, yeah, we could, and it would actually make sense. So the decision was not that difficult.
- [27:42]
Fergus O'Carroll
How do you. What do you think of it, Colin? How did it. How did it feel for you guys?
- [27:45]
Rankin Carroll
No, look, I think there's. Again, you see a lot of fans talking to brands, and brands just not responding in any way. I think this was so. It was such a tangible way to respond to them. To your question about earlier, about why we didn't do this earlier, because it would have felt hollow. Be like, yeah, that sucks. We took away lime. You know, if you weren't doing something about it. The fact that we put lime back in these packs and put them on the shelves and made them available for people is. Is what made this not a hollow corporate apology. And I think that was the key part of this as well. And even if you look back through the case study, the people who we engaged with, we sent them a pack of lime, they got candy within that as well. We apologize and made good on that. We sent them something. I think there's something about a pack.
- [28:32]
Fergus O'Carroll
With 100% lime in them.
- [28:35]
Rankin Carroll
You've been asking for nine years and. And, you know, you sent us a tweet saying, die Skittles. Here's the one. We couldn't apologize more. Sorry about that. So I think there was something about putting. Putting some meat behind the apology that made it Skittles and also made it. If you think about also the context of when this came out, there was a lot of hollow corporate. And I don't want to mention any other brands, but there was some kind of fuel gate that was happening, and they put out a corporate, you know, an apology within the New York Times, and we were done. And there was this kind of corporate apology. And I think they started to just become so empty that it was ripe for Skittles disruption. Again, we always talk about, like, when. When is a moment right, for Skittles disruption. And as soon as you start to roll your eyes at it, it's time for us to disrupt. It's almost like people are rolling their eyes to corporate apologies. Like, now we're going to take it and we're going to turn the corporate apology up to 12. Like we're going to do it in such a big, absurd and honest and open way that it's unmistakably Skittles and it's just unmissable for people.
- [29:36]
Colin Selakow
I think one other just a couple of things to bring back because I don't want to overplay this. You know, like we were bringing back lime actually over here. So we'd done 100 lime sort of lt like limited time offer. So we were kind of percolating the idea of lime and kind of keeping it around and that was actually fueling less intentionally. So we were just doing that because we knew the fandom loved the flavor. We bring it back for fun. And then by the way, what you also need to note here is that that was manifest in a lot of the haters. People are angry. You know, a change.org petition to bring back lime was. Was a lime and a real thing in the world. Social related posts to lime when they came up would be like 20 times the engagement. So a consumer would post something and then the fandom would pile on. So it's not like we did the action and then eight years or nine years go by and then we came back to it. It was kind of percolating. We were feeding it a not. And I want to stress this because we love to revise history. We were feeding it in a bit.
- [30:37]
Rankin Carroll
Of.
- [30:39]
Colin Selakow
Tactical way, if you will, to just generate some noise and generate some sales. But that kind of the lime people alive and kept coming back to it and really engaging. And so we finally, as we talked about before, said, you know what, let's really do something about this.
- [30:56]
Fergus O'Carroll
So Rankin, when this comes up, I think the intuitive response from marketers would be, I'm not touching that. That's the third rail. I've got 138,000 negative comments coming my way. Let's try a different idea. I've got to think that you were either convinced or aware of the fact that this was a movement of passion, not of hate, and therefore the risk was not as high as it might be in a different situation. But how did you. Or did you have to think through it? Did you have to sort of create a comfort level internal within your organization to sort of begin to deal with this issue head on?
- [31:40]
Rankin Carroll
Yeah.
- [31:40]
Colin Selakow
I mean, on the one hand you do build some muscle on a brand like Skittles over time because you are going to pitch your leadership around. We're going to give back the rainbow and LGBTQ and sort of bring Skittles into that. And that when we did that in 2016, that was kind of a fairly big conversation. But we. We got behind it. As one example, we're going to, you know, we're going to make a. We're going to make a Broadway show on Super Bowl. Okay, so you're with me. Who's. Who's with me? You know, we're going to make an ad for one person with David Schwimmer, and it's going to be great, trust me. You know, so you kind of.
- [32:17]
Rankin Carroll
I will give. I want to give Rankin and his team some credit here because I will tell you, I get asked this question a lot, like, how the hell do you sell work like this? And I'll be the honest answer is, it's actually not as hard as you think, because a lot of the time you walk into the room and you're like, hey, we're going to do a broader musical. And they're like, yeah, that absolutely makes sense for Skittles. That sounds great. Let's do that. And it literally happens that way. And I will tell you, I think the credit should go to the strategy that we've set up on this brand as well, because they don't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't just happen that you do work like this. I think it comes from a brand really understanding who it is and how it behaves in the world. And I've always loved that about skills. We have such a clear idea of what's our role and how do we behave in the world. So this idea of disrupting the predictable or break from common sense, it just gives you such a clear direction of where to go and what to do and having clients who understand that and an agency who understands that selling this type of work, it makes sense for skills. And I think that's that weird math that I talk about. A lot of brands, you'd walk in and you'd be chased out the room. Skittles, everyone looks around and go like that makes absolute sense for us. That's, you know, it's kind of perfect for us. So it's, you know, just. It's. It's something I. I've been lucky enough to have, I will say. So then. It's funny, you. You bring up the idea of risk, and I think it's, It's. It's interesting because risk hits a little different with Skittles. I think it's very calculated, obviously, and we're responsible with what we do with it. But I love the fact that it's built into the the brand strategy, it's built into our disruption is part of our DNA. And I think it's why the brand is such a treat to work on. And I think if the argument you're having is not about, is this too risky, but is this using that disruption to achieve the goal that we're setting out to do. And I think it's very rare to have that as well. It's about, yes, we're surfacing all this negativity, but we're doing it with a positive outcome in mind. Is a very different conversation to have rather than, oh, this tweet, just betrayal from the brand. And I'm feeling betrayed. Whatever it happens to be is risky or negative. And I think to. Even to the legal teams that we. On your end and on our end, I mean, I just give them credit for this as well. Even they bought into this idea, we'd be sitting with rooms of lawyers with 133,000 tweets and comments, and they would let stuff through because they understood the brand and they understood the idea, which.
- [34:33]
Fergus O'Carroll
You know, so how does.
- [34:35]
Colin Selakow
It's funny you say that to Colin just to say, you know, it did get to a point where I pretty much bring my lawyer with me to the first meeting just to say, okay, we're going to see some stuff. I just need to know if we're going to be on the edge of anything, you know, so help me with this. Have a look. Are we doing, you know, and. But they become part of the. Part of the. Part of the understanding of how the brand does things. So anyway, that's great. Just one of the funny things that's happening over time.
- [35:02]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Colin, how does the idea materialize on your desk? Does it. Where does it come from? It was. Was it one of many ideas? We don't need to get into the other ideas, but no, no, we do.
- [35:12]
Rankin Carroll
I mean, again, look, look, this. This was a very special situation because the. Our fans have been telling us what to do. You know what I mean? That doesn't often happen. It's like we'd had this groundswell, this movement that had been happening from every single time, from the first campaign we ever did to whatever activation we were doing. Bring back Lime, somebody was showing up and tapping us on the shoulder. So this one was kind of a slightly special case because it had such a. A clear Runway of like, all right, we now know we need. We know what we need to do with Lime. People have been telling us this for nine years. We need to do something about that. And then it Becomes how do we use that gift? And I think that was the question. So there were many executions about how we do that. What do we, you know, is it a corporate apology? Is it, you know, are there different ways to do this? And I think it was how we do it. But the, what we were doing really wasn't in question. I'll be honest. It was one of those fantastic rare situations where this gift landed on our desk and like, right, what do we do with that? And I think half the skill is like, how do you make that interesting? And how do you get people to engage with the idea? But yeah, I think it was pretty clear from the beginning this is what we wanted to do. And then just shifting the shape and what it actually looked like.
- [36:21]
Fergus O'Carroll
So for those who don't know, why don't we explain what exactly you guys did and what were the different legs that were a part of it.
- [36:31]
Rankin Carroll
So I think, again, so starting off with this idea, right, people have been complaining about this. We're finally going to apologize to 130,000, 880 people who'd ever complained.
- [36:42]
Fergus O'Carroll
Like seven years later, seven years later.
- [36:47]
Rankin Carroll
Anyone who'd ever complained, tweet, comment, whatever it happens to be, we were going to give them a personal and individualized apology from Skittles saying, sorry, we took lam away. We're bringing it back. Our bad. So again, it was started off with showing up in the, in kind of social spaces as well. So that's what they're saying. The response from people who you, you imagine you're, you know, your Twitter account suddenly gets an apology from Skittle saying, hey, you know, you mentioned four years ago that you, you know, you were bummed we took lam away, we apologize.
- [37:17]
Fergus O'Carroll
And just so everybody understands, you're literally saying, fergus, I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're coming directly to people. It's not a mass message at all.
- [37:26]
Rankin Carroll
It's not at all. It's individualized to you. And it's at, Fergus, we sorry we took lime away and we're bringing it back. We apologize to a whole bunch of people in social. And there was a great kind of chain reaction that started to happen. Then people start to repost that. You think about it. They, you're getting a, a response from this brand that you love, that you put all this passion into this tweet even a long time ago, finally responding to you. People love that. It is such an amazing positive sentiment about it.
- [37:54]
Fergus O'Carroll
And that's why people do it. It's, it's, it's absolutely.
- [37:57]
Rankin Carroll
They want a response and they don't often get it. And, and this was us just showing up in such an open and authentic way and just be like, hey, I bet we're sorry. You know what I mean? And, and, and move on. So I think it was just, it was a great thing for people to start to see. So we started doing that in Twitter and in our forums and showing up in their DMs and just starting to really personally apologize to people. And then in true Skittles fashion, you then take that same mechanism and you just turn it up to 12. You know what I mean? Right. We're apologizing to everyone. Let's turn that up to 12. And we did a 40 minute live press conference that was on Twitch and YouTube where we literally apologized to every single person. If you remember the video where there was a painting actor and he was just reading these virulent, harsh tweets about Skittles and just talking about, I might as well have bought a vomit bag. We're sorry. Actors clams. We're sorry you have trust issues. And just reading one after another after another and every single. Just going through these long lists of people.
- [38:55]
Colin Selakow
Good morning. I'm Michael Wiebe, communication director at Skittles. In 2013, Skittles upset a lot of people by taking away Lyme. Lime is back. Skittles will now apologize to everyone who ever complained at I am great 45 skittles. Stop making the green apple Skittles. They're terrible. I'm sorry. Sdianacarissa writes, they replaced the lime Skittles with a green apple. Why? We're sorry. Ora Tolini writes, It's 2021 and I'm still angry about Skittles changing the flavor of the green one. We are. We apologize. Lizzine. Beth writes, my mom just learned about green apple Skittles and she's upset now. We don't want you upset. We are sorry.
- [39:48]
Rankin Carroll
And then even in Times Square, we started just apologizing to people in the most public forum we could imagine. This giant Times Square board where we were calling people out individually. It was like, hey, at Ferguson, we're sorry that we took lam away. We're bringing it back. Calling out one after another after another. Just people posting and then doing things that really only Skittles would do. Like we did an Instagram post that we literally listed every handle of 133,000 people who had complained. And the Instagram post would have taken 10 hours to read. If you read every single one of them was basically the height of a giraffe. And again, it's the idea of taking this, the corporate apology that's usually legally mandated and done in the quietest way possible and doing it in a way that's so big and open and positive and visible that it could only be coming from one brand.
- [40:40]
Fergus O'Carroll
Rank it. It's almost. It's an earned media play at its heart. Right.
- [40:45]
Colin Selakow
Yeah, I was just going to say that. Fergus, I think this was Skittles to me, has been the brand since 2017, leading up to this, that has taught us, taught us more about earned media and this idea of what is the headline that we are seeking first? Why is it strategic? How does this designed against a business outcome in a pain point or, and, or solving a pain point. But always what's the headline we're going to generate and how will it generate talk among our fans? And I think coming back to that and always asking ourselves, will this get talked about? It's interesting, the stuff that's done less well. We've been less sharp on the headline, been less sharp on the earned outcome we were trying to create, but when we get it right, it really runs. So I think we've learned a lot about that. And I think this is funny because it's almost like analog personalization. Right? Like everyone's talking about personalization at scale, but we were doing a pretty analog way to touch 130,000 consumers. So listen, it's. We've learned a lot and I think your point is absolutely right. It's probably our. But it's really helped us write our playbook on generating earned outcomes and generating increasingly measurable impact through earned media.
- [42:01]
Fergus O'Carroll
And did you boost some of it once you saw that certain aspects, certain tactics were becoming stickier than others? Did you guys pay to boost any of the social posts? Did you do anything on tv?
- [42:12]
Rankin Carroll
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there's, you know, obviously there's a social video and pieces that played out. We took clips from the news conference, we had teasers from that. So there's a lot of that happening. And as people were responsible, obviously we're reposting and reboosting that as well. So I think there's, as I said, a little bit of that jade reaction as people started to respond to the idea. More people saw people responding to the idea and you get kind of more earned about that as well. So it's, it's just interesting. I mean, you. We mentioned a little bit earlier as well. It's, it's. Yes, it's wonderful for the people it's happening to, but even for. Even people seeing it from the outside are looking in and going like, what a great thing for a modern brand to be doing. And I think you start to get that math playing out with a lot of Skittles ideas as well. Yes, I was at the Broadway musical, it was amazing. I saw it. But people outside are looking and being like, oh my God, that's insanely awesome for a brand to be doing. I'm engaging with the brand or engaging with the idea that way.
- [43:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
So why Twitch, by the way?
- [43:09]
Rankin Carroll
Twitch is just again, if you look at our fans, just a lot of them are gamers, a lot of them are on Twitch. And it's just, it's such a huge, hugely growing platform.
- [43:19]
Fergus O'Carroll
It really is. People don't, I don't think enough people realize it. It's how they don't.
- [43:23]
Rankin Carroll
It's so massive. And you know, when we talk to our media partners and we talked to our production partners as well, obviously the, the obvious places to go are, are any of the live platforms, whether it's YouTube or Twitter, what happens to be. But you know, they mentioned like, look at Twitch. This is where people are looking at huge amounts of live streamed content. You think about the game streaming that's happening on. It's a behavior that's already there. So the idea of watching a live stream actually makes a ton more sense on Twitch than even it does on some of those other platforms as well. So once we'd seen the behavior was already there, it was kind of a no brainer to put it out there. And it was hugely successful on Twitch. We got millions of minutes of viewing or whatever the stat was, but it turned out to be a really smart place for us to launch the live press conference.
- [44:09]
Colin Selakow
Yeah, just to add to that, Fergus, I think it's part of as we shifted a lot of our investment to obviously digital digital platforms, digital media of all sorts, we are more and more becoming really hopefully effective at understanding what it takes to work on a given platform. So what it takes to run in TikTok versus Insta versus Reels versus Twitch. So we call fit for platform and fit for purpose work and work in content. And I think this again was one of the earlier examples of going into a platform. We knew that our target audiences were in droves and really participating and getting involved and looking for this kind of content. So we just got it's the medium and the message that kind of come together. I guess to quote a very old media philosopher from my Home country.
- [45:02]
Fergus O'Carroll
So let's touch base on some of the impacts, either the brand impacts, the business impacts, how. What can you share about the results that this had, the dimensions of those results?
- [45:16]
Colin Selakow
Yeah, I mean, it's never one thing you do, but everything sort of adds together. And, you know, this was, if we go back to sort of 2017, our efforts through that, you know, we've. We've experienced the highest sales, core sales in the US in our history. And this particular campaign, Apologize the Rainbow, set records in terms of impact in the period that it was running in terms of share gains, again, into too much detail, but in terms of share gains and just really driving velocities at different touch points, you know, earned impressions were off the chart, levels we've never seen before before. And that was the beginning of our calculation of how do we actually get. What the heck. What the heck does an impression actually mean? What's it worth? Yes, you can do some math around media value, but we started. It was the beginning of an effort. It was early days, but started to convert that into impact on growth. And that led us to a lot of other conversations which are now manifesting and AI is enabling us to do so much more detailed work of how to measure the impact of earned. But it really started, I'd say, in earnest around this campaign and, you know, apologize the Rainbow, it won, it's won countless awards, be it Cleo's or ten Lions, and now happily and joyfully, Effie's and in fact, the best of the best.
- [46:43]
Fergus O'Carroll
Just one last question to both of you. Rankin, what do you think other marketers can learn from this? And then, Colin, what do you think other agencies can learn from this, this campaign? Rankin, maybe start with you.
- [46:57]
Colin Selakow
Yeah. You know, I always want to stay humble because a lot of this is just luck and a lot of it's being surrounded by amazing talent. You just have that, you know, by the grace of God, I get to work with people like Colin and God Bless Ari and people like them and amazing people on our teams, our planning teams. And so trust your people probably is something I would take away from this and make sure that those people you trust are all on the same page and all growing in the same direction. So I think that's part of what I would say is success. Make sure everyone knows the brand as deeply. And I think that's the big insight for me, is this only happens if everyone working on this business knows about the fandom, knows about what our consumers are talking about, and is hungry and curious to go get that information to turn it into insight, to turn it into an idea. Those are probably the big ones. And yeah, trust your gut probably a little bit.
- [48:04]
Rankin Carroll
You know, just to, to reiterate, I wanted to just shout out to Ari as well. Obviously very sad with his passing, but he was, he was a huge part of this as well. I mean, I think, you know, Ari was, is. Is a huge part of why this brand is where it is today. A lot of the, in fact, all of the work we've been doing since 2017, he was at the, the helm for, and I think he was the driving force behind the, the reinvention of this brand. So I just wanted to give a huge shout out to be. To, to Ori. And we really wouldn't be here and this work wouldn't be anywhere near as great as it turned out to be without his, you know, stewardship and guidance and, and friendship.
- [48:42]
Colin Selakow
He pushed us hard.
- [48:44]
Rankin Carroll
He pushed us. He was an enormous pain in the ass, but he did make the work phenomenally.
- [48:49]
Fergus O'Carroll
But he was a, he was a gentleman too, but, you know, he's a.
- [48:52]
Colin Selakow
Welcome disruption to the.
- [48:55]
Fergus O'Carroll
That's right.
- [48:56]
Colin Selakow
That is absolutely unwelcome sometime, but.
- [48:58]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, exactly.
- [49:00]
Rankin Carroll
He was a disruption whether you wanted it or not. So. But just a shout out to him. And I think, think just to answer your question as well, I think one of the lessons that we took out of this as well is your fans are everything. The people who believe in this brand are engaged with it. You cannot ignore them because they are the bedrock upon which everything else sits. So I think it's a lesson to brands to be cognizant of the fans, to address them, to talk to them, to just invite them into the brand world. I think it's a vital thing for, for all of us to do. And I think the second thing is that just that great strategy makes great work. Like, I think it's about understanding that strategy and understanding who the brand is, what the brand does, how it exists in culture. I think once you have common understanding on clients and agency and production partners, media partners, once everyone is aligned on that, everything becomes so much easier and so much, you know, just much more streamlined in the way to do that. So I think it's, it's taking the time to set that up front will set you up for success, you know, down the line.
- [50:09]
Colin Selakow
The one thing I want to add to it all, Fergus, just, it's so important is consistency. Consistent strategically, but creatively fresh. And how do you continue to, to do that? And I think that's where working with Colin and the team at DDB has been such a gift really in terms of no one wants to reinvent for its own sake, but they just want to make sure the work is fresh and that we're self disrupting. But at the core we will always be blanking the rainbow and tasting the rainbow and everything we do has got to come back to some of the things that Cullinan has described here today.
- [50:44]
Fergus O'Carroll
It is apologize the rainbow. I love that line. A welcome disruption to the predictable. It's very cool. It won a US gold Effie in 2023. In 2024 global grand winner in the Effie's best of the best competition, it's Rankin Carroll, Chief Brand Officer Mars Wrigley. I mean look at this. M&M's Snickers, Dove, Galaxy, Extra Orbit and Twix. Man, you're living in a nirvana world of marketing. And he is out of London. And Colin Seller, Alec Howe is Chief Creative Officer for DDB in our show's hometown of Chicago. Thank you both for sharing and again, brilliant conversation. Really enjoyed it and I think for sure this is going to be another incredibly popular episode. Thanks to both of you for your time.
- [51:35]
Rankin Carroll
Thanks for having me. Thank you.
- [51:37]
Fergus O'Carroll
And we will see everybody on the next episode.